Russian drama ‘Loveless’ wins London Film Festival top prize

Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, a piercing drama about a divorcing couple whose son disappears, has won the best picture award at the London Film Festival.

It’s a second London trophy for Zvyagintsev, who won the same prize in 2014 with Leviathan, a tragic satire of small-town corruption that brought the director criticism from Russian officials.

British director Andrea Arnold, president of the judging panel, said Loveless turned one family’s story into “a universal tragedy.”

South African director John Trengove won the festival’s first-feature trophy Saturday for The Wound, a drama about masculinity and sexuality set against the backdrop of Xhosa initiation rites.

The 12-day festival ends on Sunday with Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a small-town tragicomedy starring Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson.